au revoir Bruxelles...je te manquerai

like all good things in life, study abroad does too come to an end. I cannot express what studying abroad has meant to me, and how living in Brussels has changed me both personally and professionally. College is a time to learn about yourself and what it is that you want to do with the rest of your life, and studying abroad, no matter where you choose to do so, is just one more thing that will help you create your professional image and inspire you in your chosen path.

My experience was made special not only because I had the opportunity to study the European Union, because of the people I got to meet, the opportunities for travel I had and the chance to get to know and live with a fun Belgian family. So to all of those who made my experience abroad wonderful...thank you so much!

If anyone takes anything away from this blog, it is that studying abroad is really the best way to learn about another world and expand your horizons. And studying abroad is now more reachable to more students though scholarships, financial aid and other means that get you to where you want to be.

So a special thanks to the folks at the Gilman Scholarship Foundation, who helped me finance this trip. For more information on how to apply for a Gilman Scholarship, please visit there website at www.iie.org/Gilman/. For more information on my specific study abroad program, please visit, http://www.aub.be/ or the American University website.

there's stuff to do in Brussels too!

So I realized that whoever reads this blog (ahem Daniela) might accidentally think that I spent no time in Brussels at all...so in honor of my host city, this blog entry is dedicated to all the fabulous things you can do in Brussels!
-Mannekin Pis (Gare Centrale metro stop):for a typical Brussels landmark, everyone must make a stop at Mannekin Pis. As an added bonus, the waffle shop next to Mannekin Pis is the BEST in all of Brussels!
-Grand Place (Gare Centrale):see the old guilds, the town hall and the center of Brussels!
-Atomium (Heizel)built 1958 for the Universal Exhibition this great metal structure is amazing to behold!
-Royal Palace(Parc): self explanatory. The best part is being in Brussels in September when its open to the public
-Le Sablon et Petit Sablon (either Parc or Porte du Namur): monument to two great Protestant leaders in Belgium as well as very close to the artsy area of Brussels
-EU Commission and Council buildings (Schuman) for the full Brussels and EU experience, take a look at Berlaymont and Justis Lipsius buildings right off the Schuman metro
-Le Cinquantaime (Schuman) build in commemoration of the 50 anniversity of Belgian independence during the reign of Leopold II, the Wars of Europe museum is free of charge and allows for visitors to climb to the top of the Cinquantaime for a view of Brussels
-EU Parliament (Maelbeek): in front of the Parliament is Place Lux, where you can enjoy a beer while talking to members of parliament and their staff.
-Celtica and Delirium (De Broukere) two great places to get a drink after a long of touristing. Celtica offers a great Irish pub feel with dance floor upstairs if you wanna keep going at happy hour prices until midnight and Delirium is a one of a kind place, with over 2000 types of beer available for you to sample!
-and much much more!!!!! Brussels offers many opportunities to see and do many incredible things...so go and have fun!

Becoming legal in a country where the drinking age is definitely before 21

Super long title folks but I was trying to be funny and failed. Oh well. As you may have surmised I turned 21 last weekend and in honor of this momentous occasion my friends and I traveled to the land of pubs (read Dublin) to celebrate in style. So although I'd been in Europe for three months now, I have my first official "legal" drink by U.S. standards at the Guinness factory among my still underaged (by American standards) amigos.

But I'm jumping the gun...first I should explain how we got there. Several months ago it was decided we would all meet up in Dublin... okay not much explaining needed to happened. Basically my friends are awesome and we went to Dublin to freeze our butts off on a walking tour, followed by Guinness (which is disgusting) followed by dinner at an authentic Irish Pub...Irelend's full of them (another attempt at a joke...please laugh) and dancing. Basically it was a very memorable day and I'm very grateful to everyone who came out to celebrate with me. No more typing... visual aids will now be provided... enjoy!

Rollin' through the Balkans

This post is going to set up a little differently. Normally I go through day-to-day on what I did and what happened but for this post I think I'll just right about my general impressions and what I learned because a) I took too long to enter this post and b) I think it makes more sense.

As part of my abroad program, we took a 12-day tour of the Balkans, traversing Nuremberg (Germany), Vienna (Austria), Budapest (Hungary), Belgrade (Serbia), Sarajevo (Bosnia), Zagreb(Croatia), Ljubljana (Slovenia), and finally Munich (Germany) before making it home to Brussels. Th purpose if this trip was to teach us about the experiences of the Balkans, potential for EU membership, and how ethnic divisions are contained within these territories.

Although I had a good time on the trip, it sadden me to see the state of some of the Balkan states. The turmoil of 1992-1995 has not yet left the streets of Belgrade or Sarajevo, and daily reminders of the war do not help the collective memory of these countries pull together and overcome their obstacles. In Belgrade, you can still see the destruction done by NATO missiles on the facade of buildings, and in Sarajevo, sarajevo roses color the sidewalks to show where bullets and bombs torn up a life. Additionally, ethnic tensions amongst the Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnian continues to plague the political and social lives of many in Bosnia, especially internal conflicts over Repulbika Srpska and Kosovo for Serbia.



At this rate, I don't see either country belonging to the EU for some time. The EU won't allow internal and external conflict to enter within their "club" and the international dilemma that is Kosovo has put the EU and Serbia in quite a standstill. Talking with the office of the foreign minister, they seem to indicate the Kosovo takes presidence over EU membership and as for Bosnia, potential for violence is too great to result in the development and security it desperately needs.

Unfortunately, Bosnia and Serbia are yesterday's wars and conflicts and without international oversight, progress in these nations seems to move a snail's pace if that.

On another note, it was such an amazing opportunity to visit these locations and hear from local residents about their feelings and attitudes towards their neighbors and the EU. We also got a chance to visit Srebrenisa and the tunnel built by Bosniaks suring the seige of Sarajevo to provide supplies for those in the city. Experiencing the war from a soldier's and genocide survivor' perceptive helped put the conflict into tangible and realistic terms.

For those of you with the opportunity to ever travel to the Balkans, I suggest you do so and learn about the cultural conflict that has driven so many to fight and keep fighting for their homeland and territories.

Den Haag + Amsterdam + Daniela = awesome weekend ever!

By now my most loyal readers (Daniela) know that my abroad program spends as little time as humanly possible in Brussels and instead we go to a million other places. This past weekend, we got to go to Den Haag (the Hague for non Dutch speaking folks) home of the International Criminal Court, Eurojust, Royal Palace and other wicked cool and awesome stuff. After that we headed over to Amsterdam for the weekend because what's a visit to the Netherlands without a visit to Amsterdam?



To commence then, on Wednesday we left Brussels via the 18:22 train to Den Haag were I had a jolly good time on the train laughing it up with Becca, Ben and Adrienne (and Flo for the 10 minutes she was there). Once we arrived to Den Haag two hours later, we were greeted by Jerry who took us to our hotel (we got off at Gravenstraat...that's right ppl i remember). We put our belongings down and headed out to see the locals. However, the locals won cause we were wicked tired and called it an early night.

Next morning we headed to the ICC and had two speakers tell us all about it and current cases they are working on. I t was totally awesome as well as a tour of one of the court rooms. It was totally legit although here's some advice... try to not end up here (unless you're a kick ass lawyer). Anyway then we had lunch and then back to the same building where we had a meeting with Eurojust. Again super awesome to see the institutions we read about in practice and hear from the professionals. That evening we again stayed up chatted and tried to interact with the locals but they won again.

On Friday we bested the awful weather and made it to the Netherlands Defense College for a lecture on...you guessed it defense and then lunch followed by a Jerry Tour....which was AWESOME as usual. Some of the highlights include the Royal Palace, seeing some embassies and learning where the prime minister lives (its nice let me tell you). Later we rendez-vous over to the OPCW for a lecture on chemical weapons and as soon as that was over it was officially the weekend and that meant...AMSTERDAM!!!!



By super awesome timing Daniela arrived at the train station at the same time as we did so after several months of not seeing each other we did and it was VERY EXCITING! I think we scared some of my Brussels peeps by our hugging...oh well. We all located our bus and headed our to Hotel Slotania (laugh here....go ahead) and promptly headed out once more! Becca, Ben Daniela and I made our way to Leidseplein (Led Zeppelin lol) the cool bar scene in Amsterdam to await the arrival of everyone else... I would say good bonding tome for all involved. Later, the four of us found this bar/club called News Cafe where we parked it for the rest of the night and had an AWESOME TIME!!!! We really did... more bonding and dancing and singing but especially bonding!

The next day the original four walked over to Central Station (took us two hours) to go on our walking tour.... we did lots of walking. On the way Daniela and I were able to catch up on lots of things...it was so much fun! Later we grabbed some lunch and met up with several other Brussels ppl for the walking tour which started at Dam Square. Tour took us through the the important Amsterdam sites including the Red Light District (yes I did see ladies in windows), occult churches, several "coffeeshops", the old Jewish Quarter, Rembrandt's casa, and lots and lots of canals. It was awesome and very educational (see even on our time off we get educated). Our last stop was the Anne Frank House were 4 + Erin stepped inside to visit the annex.... Completely worth it.

Sunday morning Daniela, Autumn and I rose early and headed to the Van Gogh Museum which was very interesting. I learned a lot about him. We later chilled at Museumplein (park right next to Van Gogh) for several hours before it was time for Autumn and I to head back to Brussels. Daniela dropped us off and I cried a little (I hate good-byes...even if they are see you laters) and off we went. Autumn and I chatted for a bit before falling asleep and when we woke we were home in Brussels once again.

Kiev.....that's in Ukraine

Soooooooooo for my internship I was given this totally awesome opportunity to go visit Kiev for the 55th General Assembly. After months of prep at the Brussels office, the time had finally come to go off into the world unknown (its a very exotic place.. no joke).

So i woke up at 5:30am on Tuesday to get myself all ready, set, go and made my way to the bus station at Schumann to catch the bus that goes to the airport... after getting lost (but only a little bit)I paid for my ticket and was off! I made it to the airport before any of my co-workers and stood in line waiting for them to arrive. Finally Charlotte and Miriam arrived and ditched Pawel who was M.I.A. and stood in the wicked long line for security. (Never again will I complain about airport security in the States). Anyway, we met up with everyone at our gate and boarded up to our first stop :Prague.

I wasn't doing too hotly in Prague(read: I became sick) so the original three hour made five hour layover was AWFUL except that a) this creepy Italian man was making a bad job of hitting on me and b) I meant Lucy who was one the Canadian reps on her way to Kiev as well. Lucy was very entertaining and she chatted with me the entire way there which is when things got interesting. We arrived at the airport which looked more like a bus station and nobody from ATA was there to pick us up. Lucy used her famazing Russian skills to ask around but still nada... so I called Pawel and Charlotte to see what was going on. They managed to get us a car and we drove the 45 minutes into town. By this point neither one of us had eaten since breakfast and were famished so we ate the the hotel's restaurant where I proceeded to get insulted by some locals for being American and wanting to take over everywhere.It was so fun to be insulted...not. Anyway no biggie but I was wicked tired to I called it a night.

Next morning Miriam and I got dressed and were ready to help but Charlotte told us she didn't need us right away so we thought we'd take the morning off to see the city. However, Pawel did so we went straight to work...... and that's what I basically did the remainder of my time in Kiev. I sat in on lectures, meetings, helped out board members, took notes and everyone's favorite....distributed reimbursements. I got to meet some awesome people, namely those of the Slovakian and Canadian delegations and on Thursday but it failed mostly cause I wasn't feeling it and then again on Friday and that was a huge success.

On Saturday morning we got to go on a hour and a half tour on Kiev before boarding the bus back to the airport. What I did get to see was absolutely gorgeous and a great incentive to go back someday to see it properly. I made it back to Brussels without a hitch and rested up the following day after my five-days of non-stop running around...but it was totally worth it!

Benelux + Germany= fun fun fun

so I'm officially wicked behind on posts because I've been running around like a mad woman but two weekends ago I was in the following cities... ready? Luxembourg City, Trier, Maastricht and Liege (and I hope in that order).

In Luxembourg we got to go visit the European Court of Justice and the European Investment Bank which were both extremely educational and really cool to see what we learned in class in action and what not. Everyone at both institutions were extremely friendly and I'm so glad we had such an amazing opportunity to go. That evening, we ventured towards "nightlife" and after several failed attempts where tensions rose a bit...lol, we made it to BANANAS...lmao. It was your typical European bar with background American music and we promptly made it a very loud place to be.

Next morning we headed off to Trier to see an ancient Roman city in Germany. We headed to the museum where the security guards followed us around the ENTIRE time we were there. It was a bit unnerving, especially since we were the only group dignified with a personal body guard.... it was bizarre and I still don;t understand why we were followed so closely. After that, Prof. Sheridan took us once again on one of his awesome city torus and we saw the PorteNegra, the Imperial Baths, the old Throne room (now a church), the old Jewish ghetto and many more awesome sites.

Next day we were in Maastricht for a bit to see some of the Netherlands but unfortunately couldn't stay the night because nobody could accommodate us so we drove into Liege and it was the first city without a Jerry Tour. Although as luck would have it we met up with him at an Irish pub so it was good fun and an awesome time.

The next morning was a somber one as we headed to the American WWII cementary and then museum. It was difficult to see all the fallen troops and it puts into perspective all the lives lost during the Second World War. After our long and reflective day we headed home to Brussels to see the start of a new week.

Next blog...Kiev!